monks

LONDON—Britain’s GCHQ, the government communications agency that electronically monitors half the world from space, has confirmed the claim by the Dalai Lama that agents of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the PLA, posing as monks, triggered the riots that have left hundreds of Tibetans dead or injured.

Tibetans and Han Chinese residents look at Chinese soldiers as they patrol a street in Kangding county,
the capital of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in China’s southwestern Sichuan province.
(Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images)

GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer.